deaths on the nile

7/28/2019 Deaths on the Nile

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Deaths on the Nile

Is Egypts revolution following the course of Irans?

BYSlavoj iek

Now that the Egyptian Army has decided to break the stalemate and cleanse the public space ofIslamist protesters, and the result ishundredsof deaths, one should first just imagine what an

uproar this would have caused if the same bloodbath were to happen, say, in Iran. However, it is

more urgent to take a step back and focus on the absent third party in the ongoing conflict:Where are the protesters who took over Tahrir Square two-and-a-half years ago? Is their role

now not weirdly similar to the role of the Muslim Brotherhood during the 2011 Arab Springthat of the impassive observer?

With themilitary coup in Julywhen the army, at first supported by those who ousted the

Mubarak regime two years ago, deposed the democratically elected president and governmentthe circle has somehow closed: The protesters who toppled Mubarak in 2011, demandingdemocracy, passively supported a military coup d'tat that subsequently abolished that

democracy. What is going on?

The dominant reading that has been proposed by, among others,Francis Fukuyama, goes thusly:

The protest movement that toppled Mubarak was predominantly the revolt of the educated

middle class, with the poor workers and farmers reduced to the role of (sympathetic) observers.But once the gates of democracy were open, the theory continues, the Muslim Brotherhood,

whose social base is composed of the poor majority, won democratic elections and formed a

government dominated by Muslim fundamentalists. In turn, the original core of secular protesters

turned against the new government, ready to endorse even a military coup as a way to stop them.

Such a simplified vision ignores a key feature of the protest movement: the explosion of

heterogeneous organizations (of students, women, workers, etc.) through which Egyptian civilsociety has begun to articulate its interests outside the scope of state and religious institutions.

This vast network of new social forms, much more than the overthrow of Mubarak, is the

principal gain of the Arab Spring. It is an ongoing process, independent of big political changeslike the Armys coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government; it goes deeper than thereligious/liberal divide.

The parallel we should draw here is between the Egyptian uprising and the failed 2009-2010

Green Revolution in Iran. The green color adopted by the supporters of the illegally defeatedpresidential candidate Hossein Moussavi andthe cries of Allahu Akbar! that resonated fromthe roofs of Tehran in the evening darknessclearly indicated that they saw their activity as the

undoing of the 1979 Khomeini revolution's eventual corruption. This return to the revolution's

roots was not only programmatic; it also entailed the emphatic unity of the people and their all-

encompassing solidarity. Through creative self-organization they improvised new ways toarticulate protest with a unique mixture of spontaneity and discipline, like the ominous march of

thousands in complete silence. We were dealing with a popular uprising of the deceived partisans
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of the Khomeini revolution: Moussavi's name stood for the genuine resuscitation of the popular

dream that sustained the revolution in the first place.

The 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced, therefore, to a hard line Islamist takeover. It

was much more. The fact that the 2011 Green Revolution had to be stifled demonstrates that the

Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashedunheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which everything seemed possible.What followed was a gradual closing of possibility through the Islam establishments takeover ofpolitical control.

Reacting to the well-known characterization of Marxism as ''the Islam of 20th century,'' Pierre-

Andr Taguieff, secularizing Islam's abstract fanaticism, observed that Islam is turning out to be''the Marxism of 21st century,'' prolonging, after the decline of Communism, its violent anti-

capitalism. Do, however, recent vicissitudes of Muslim fundamentalism not confirm Walter

Benjamin's insight that every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed revolution? The rise ofFascism is the Lefts failure: a proof that there was a revolutionary potential, a dissatisfaction,

that the Left was unable to mobilize. And does the same not hold for todays so-called Islamo-Fascism? Does the rise of radical Islam not correlate to the disappearance of the secular Left inMuslim countries? When Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country,who still remembers that, 40 years ago, it was a country with strong secular tradition, including a

powerful Communist party that took power there independently of the Soviet Union?

Even in the case of clearly fundamentalist movements, one should be careful not to miss their

social component. The Taliban, for example, are regularly presented in the mainstream media as

fundamentalist Islamists who enforce their rule with terror. When, in the spring of 2009, they

took over the Swat valley in Pakistan, theNew York Timesreported that they engineered a classrevolt that exploit[ed] profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their

landless tenants. If, however, by taking advantage of the farmers plight, the Taliban wereraising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal, what prevents liberaldemocrats in Pakistan, as well as the United States, from similarly taking advantage of thisplight and trying to help the landless farmers? But they have not, and the sad implication is that

the feudal forces in Pakistan are the natural ally of the liberal democracy.

And this brings us back to Egypt: Far from being a neutral benevolent mediator and guarantor of

social stability, the Army instead stands for and embodies a certain social and politicalprogramroughly speaking, integration into global-market, pro-Western, authoritariancapitalism. As such, the Armys intervention is needed insofar as the majority is not ready toaccept capitalism democratically.In contrast to the Armys secular vision, the MuslimBrotherhood endeavors to impose a fundamentalist-religious rule. Both of these ideologicalvisions exclude what the Arab Spring protesters stood for: economic solidarity and justice;

democracy of active, engaged citizens.

Although (almost) everyone enthusiastically supported the Tahrir Square democratic explosion, a

hidden struggle to appropriate the meaning of the protests was quietly taking place. In the West,

the official circles and most of the media celebrated Tahrir Square as similar to the pro-democracy velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe: a desire for Western liberal democracy, a
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desire to become like the West. But we shouldnt be so fascinated by sublime moments ofnational unity. Rather, our focus should be on what happens the day after. How will this

emancipatory explosion be translated into new social order? In the last decades, we witnessed awhole series of emancipatory popular explosions that were re-appropriated by the global

capitalist order, either in its liberal form (from South Africa to Philippines) or in its

fundamentalist form (Iran).

As we used to say almost half a century ago, one doesnt have to be a weatherman to knowwhich way the wind blows in Egypt: towards Iran. Even if the Army wins and stabilizes thesituation, this very victory can breed a Fascist explosion, similar to the Khomeini revolution, that

will sweep over Egypt in a couple of years. Only a worldwide coalition committed to the

struggle for freedom and democracy and for social and economic justice can save us from this

prospect.

deaths on the nile

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